Inclusive Research and Co-design in Digital Health
Digital health initiatives often have uneven engagement once deployed in real-world settings, raising important digital equity considerations. Trust, prior institutional experience, data confidence, and structural inequality shape whether digital tools are adopted long-term.
This online workshop will examine the practical implications of these dynamics for digital health design, testing, and implementation. It will focus on how inclusive research and co-design approaches can strengthen recruitment, improve the credibility of engagement processes, and support more reliable adoption in complex, real-world settings.
The online session will cover:
How mistrust and structural inequality influence digital health engagement
Why access and usability alone do not resolve participation gaps
The role of data confidence and institutional history in shaping uptake
Recruitment and communication strategies for digitally excluded and low-trust groups
Applying inclusive research principles to digital testing, piloting and implementation
We would like to invite you to join us online if you are a UK-based:
Health or care professionals
Manager
Researcher
Student
Patient
Family carer
Small-or-Medium sized Enterprise
This session is relevant for professionals involved in the design, testing or implementation of digital health innovations.
Facilitator: Muhammed Rauf, Founder, Elysium London
Muhammed Rauf is a practitioner and strategist specialising in inclusive research within public-sector and academic environments. He has led qualitative health inequalities research across National Health Service partners, academic institutions and voluntary sector organisations, with particular focus on communities often absent from traditional research participation.
During and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, his work addressed medical and data scepticism, digital exclusion and engagement in low-trust contexts. This involved developing community research models, designing tailored recruitment approaches and working alongside institutional partners to align lived realities with governance and research requirements.
Through Elysium London, he now focuses on strengthening inclusive research infrastructure, developing practical models and field-tested frameworks that support sustainable engagement, credible evidence generation and effective implementation in digital health and innovation settings. See Muhammed's recent white paper here!
Accessibility: This workshop will be held online using Microsoft Teams, which enables closed captions. The slides will be shared after the session.
Please note, this online workshop will be recorded and added to our online methods library so that those unable to attend can benefit from this resource in future. You will be able to keep your camera off and use the chat if you prefer your face / voice not to be featured.